Ignatius Cardinal Kung

Ignatius Cardinal Kung, (Gong Pinmei), Chinese prelate (born Aug. 2, 1901, Shanghai, China—died March 12, 2000, Stamford, Conn.), spent 30 years in Chinese prisons for his opposition to state control of religion and became China’s best-known Christian dissident. Born into a Roman Catholic family, he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1930. Appointed bishop of Shanghai in 1949—only days after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China—Kung was the first native Chinese to hold that post. He found himself increasingly at odds with the policies of China’s communist government, and in 1955, after his repeated refusals to denounce the pope and adhere to the state-run Patriotic Catholic Association, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to life in prison for leading a “counterrevolutionary clique under the cloak of religion.” He was released to house arrest in 1985. Two years later he was freed from house arrest and the next year went to the U.S. to seek medical treatment, eventually settling with family members in Connecticut. In a private audience with Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1988, he learned that the pope had secretly named him a cardinal in 1979. The appointment was made public in May 1991. Kung was never allowed to return to China. During his last years, he was involved in running the Cardinal Kung Foundation, a human rights organization devoted to helping Roman Catholics in China.